The Natural Capital of Flood Plains
Why Letting Nature Do the Hard Work is the Smartest Investment You'll Never Regret!
Floodplains are the most under-appreciated assets in our natural capital arsenal to fight climate change. For decades we've treated them badly as second rate farmland, we have flattened, ploughed, drained, and built on them. With pressure on more housing, we are now increasingly paving over them, storing up trouble that will lead to evermore frequent catastrophic floods.
But we are discovering that in their natural state they can provide the flood defence infrastructure and clean up our rivers, without putting up our water bills. They do as good as job as built infrastructure for 1-3% of the cost of all that concrete, and keep on going for years to come, and for free.
Copyright Trevor Sparrow
What is Natural Flood Management
The only flood defence that gets stronger, greener and cheaper with time, and provides insurance that is prevention not just payout
For decades we have trusted concrete walls and steel gates to keep rivers at bay, yet the simplest, cheapest and most beautiful form of flood defence was sitting under our noses all along, quietly growing all around us. Natural flood Management (NFM) doesn't fight water it befriends it: slowing it with trees, holding it in wetlands, spreading it across fields and meadows. It is flood protection that doubles as habitat creation, carbon capture, and farm support. It is one of those rare ideas where the logical thing and the magical thing are exactly the same.
Postcards for a Small Planet
